Egoism

If you're going to quote someone, you really should use the quote function, so that they notice it. I did indeed make an assumption about your belief, and I apologize for that. However, now I'm curious... what are your beliefs? Are they in agreement overall with the topic you've created discussion about, or is this a topic of controversy, even for you?

On a sidenote, the reason I assumed you believed in this concept is because of your reply to my first statements. That's not to say what you said was wrong, just that it can be it can be taken with some implications, even if those implications don't lie within the argument explicitly. It looked a little bit like you were defending the concept, so afterward, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say you believe in said concept. That's not to say you HAVE to believe in a concept to defend it, only that it leads others to believe you do, more often than not.

You have taken egoism for granted and assumed it as the truth while demanding others prove altruism can occur. That is making a claim about our nature. The burden always lies with the one making the claim.



Nothing has been "disproven," your assumption was simply dismissed. To quote the mighty Hitchslapper, "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." If other commenters wish to make claims, that's their problem. I, however, in the process of answering your OP, introduced no new claims about our reality (didn't claim altruism definitely does happen, nor did I say it doesn't), so I get to sit back, chillaxing all cool, and shoot some b-ball outside of the school.

Do you concede that altruism is a possibility? If not, prove it.

---

Let me take a whack at this thought provoking question shit. Who is your daddy and what does he do? Hold on, wrong note. If a psychopath, or someone who lacks empathy, assists another, is that behavior necessarily due to selfish motives?

Seems like I was ignored.

Well using reasoning and empirical evidence one might attribute a large number of things we do to evolutionary psychology. I don't think anyone is really denying that. But if you're going into insist egoism is the only form of agency we have regarding this subject, then the burden of proof is on you.

I can't quote 5 people in the same post, toymanc (the post I quoted from to write my reply), Waar and Rbz (with the @ system) got the benefit of notifications. I wonder if this will work:

@complete-horizon-4579257 (Nailed it)

As for my view, well, it's a controversial topic for anyone, an argument still undecided and argued for or against by many well known philosophers since its inception. Everyone from Hume to Rand, Hutcheson to Bertrand.

Most philosophers tend to disagree with Egoism, but the arguments for either side are primarily supported by empirical evidence alone, or I should say have been. Since the introduction of Darwinian philosophy we have taken a greater focus on studying Neuroscience and have continually been finding physical correlations that seem to indicate our brains operate in this Egoist fashion. But, no one has claimed any hard evidence as of yet.

@Rbz

I never said altruism was not possible, some Egoist philosophies (Hedonism) make claims of self-interest only (not in the especial sense), not selfishness, thus allowing altruism. Though as I noted to Waar, modern egoists, some of them anyways, promote that it is indeed selfishness and not self-interest, based on neuroscientific studies, social study and experience.

Also, I'm just egging him on to promote conversation, though I did write that and in any debate you must be willing to support whatever you write regardless of its purpose, so I will put forward a few arguments for Egoism.

"One of the more common arguments for psychological egoism states that even though on the surface one person’s acts might appear selfish and another person’s acts might appear unselfish, in both cases each person is just doing what they want to do, which is inherently selfish. If S donates money to the poor, then S is donating money because that’s what S wants to do. Of course, if helping others is what S wants to do, that is what would generally be defined as altruism, but for a psychological egoist that doesn’t counteract the fact that S wanted to do it."

"Experience shows that people must be taught to care for others with carrots and sticks—with reward and punishment. So seemingly altruistic ultimate desires are merely instrumental to egoistic ones; we come to believe that we must be concerned with the interests of others in order to gain rewards and avoid punishment for ourselves."

"Another argument for psychological egoism relies on the idea that we often blur our conception of ourselves and others when we are benevolent. Consider the paradigm of apparently selfless motivation: concern for family, especially one’s children. Francis Hutcheson anticipates the objection when he imagines a psychological egoist proclaiming: “Children are not only made of our bodies, but resemble us in body and mind; they are rational agents as we are, and we only love our own likeness in them” (1725/1991, p. 279, Raphael sect. 327). And this might seem to be supported by recent empirical research. After all, social psychologists have discovered that we tend to feel more empathy for others we perceive to be in need when they are similar to us in various respects and when we take on their perspective (Batson 1991; see §5b). In fact, some psychologists have endorsed precisely this sort of self-other merging argument for an egoistic view (for example, Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, and Neuberg 1997)."

"Philosopher Carolyn Morillo (1990) has defended a version of psychological hedonism based on more recent neuroscientific work primarily done on rats. Morillo argues for a “strongly monistic” theory of motivation that is grounded in “internal reward events,” which holds that “we [ultimately] desire these reward events because we find them to be intrinsically satisfying” (p. 173). The support for her claim is primarily evidence that the “reward center” of the brain, which is the spring of motivation, is the same as the “pleasure center,” which indicates that the basic reward driving action is pleasure."

Psychological egoism is more parsimonious than psychological altruism.

As for your deep question:

How can one assist another without first being able to understand their situation?

I've already come to my own conclusion about Egoism and have arguments in line to refute most arguments for it (any that I've come across so far), including those above. I just want to get a few other opinions and see if anyone comes up with more arguments I can use against it. In the words of Morillo most of it is just "empirical straws in the wind". But it does get people thinking.

@cruz737

I scrolled past your post because I assumed it was just a reaction video.

Have you seen Serious Discussion? That place is anything but one to have a good discussion. And most of the good conversations I've lurked have come from I.B. thus...

By looking at big titties and nodding with the dude next to him in agreement that all is right with the universe. Then he high fives and stabs the motherfucker to remove the competition. Cold, calculating, killer altruist.

I got what I wanted for the most part, so my job here is done (but hey, this thread did get a little more interesting again, so I may reply some more). The excerpts were amusing; philosophers just can't help dicking around with semantics and conjecture. If you don't mind indulging me a bit further, I'd like to see precisely what your refutations are.

The greatest enjoyment I derive from this thread is just staring at your avatar's nipple. See my avatar for more info.




How to properly conclude? Ah, with a quote from Socrates, master of philosophy. He once said this as a rebuttal to a particularly brutal critical examination of his work by Plato, utilizing his trademark Socratic method: "How about you philosophize deez nuts?"

How about "depends on the person"?

Also- feeling good about having done a good deed doesn't necessarily mean that selfishness (however obtuse and roundabout) was the motivator for said action.

I yank a girl out the street so she doesn't get run over. My thought process doesn't have time to consider "Man, saving her life will be really awesome for my self-esteem". It barely has the time to go "Danger. Out. Now".

Not denying that some people develop a hero complex and start doing goodwill simply because they get a high off it- but to presume that that is the default is rather depressing.

Understandable, alright. If that is necessary to reply to multiple people, it's not a problem in the least. I didn't receive a notification for this next part, oddly enough, only for the quote above. I should probably tweak my account's notification settings.



Huh, it's pretty interesting that we've been able to progress so far for one side of the debate, even though we have no hard evidence, we've still been able to observe the phenomenons and make theories about them. I like the fact that you listed the names of some of the philosophers that have debated this topic, it really helps make it easy to understand the meaning of your post.

Although, you didn't quite answer my question: which side of that controversy-painted fence do you sit on, and what kinds of information and/or experiences led you to that conclusion? In my case, my own conclusion that altruism is a possibility stems from the actions of kindness of friends of mine, who have helped people out, even when their situation is less favorable than the people that they're helping, and are clearly the ones in need of help. This doesn't prove that my beliefs are correct, nor could it, but it is the experience of these things that led me to my beliefs in the end.

That's not to say I can't be swayed by new information, if we do bring hard evidence to the table that supports one side of the debate or the other, as a logically-thinking individual, I would be forced to review, and then, if correct, accept the evidence that supports the theories. I don't like to fight uphill battles, and there is no battle that traverses a steeper hill than to fight against hard evidence with flimsy theories that can't be proven, so when and if hard evidence is shown, I'll have to adjust my beliefs based on the evidence.

If people don't adjust their beliefs according to new supporting evidence presented, then they are simply exercising blind faith. I don't want to be that kind of person, so I make sure to regularly remember my thoughts and actions, making notes of the more important ones to me, and giving them much though. It seems like you do something similar, if not the same, but your intellect is certainly impressive.

I hope you continue to have deep and thought-provoking debates like this, good sir.

I'm not entirely sure the point is that we get off it.
Well instead of "this helped my self esteem" it could be, "I'm so glad I helped, I couldn't imagine how shitty I would've felt if I witness something terrible happen to this person if I didn't do anything".

Well maybe it's not what we consciously think, but where the subconscious feelings stem from.

At least that's the impression I get from how OP is making Egoism out to be. I'd just call it evolutionary psychology.

When did IB turn into Serious Discussion? Or did I miss the memo?

Go away, Nexus.

Yea, you failed to catch it with your face when it was thrown. Go back to the Slobbering Dimwits section, we here in Intellectual Bickering are speaking about matters of life and death.

I wasn't aware a section like that existed, I'll keep an eye out for it.

That's how we of the aristocracy refer to it when we're not swirling our glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. You plebs know it as "SD." My butler shall escort you from the Insightful Botherer section. Fucking mudbloods.

You mean something like this?

if you want serious answers don't post in IB

I obviously concede (hence explaining my position on the subject earlier), you can't defend absolute claims against skepticism.

Though I'm not sure if you're being serious with your response to my question. Someone cannot agree with another if they cannot empathize. It was funny though, if flawed.

"An asshole who likes to argue" is an accurate assessment. I enjoy intelligent conversation or debate and I often like to step on others toes in order to rile them up about their ideals.

The easiest way to refute absolute Egoism is through skepticism, as you already know. But, not everyone ascribes to uncertainty, unsurprisingly a jarring revelation for most. So these arguments can be used in its absence (i.e. arguing with scientists and most psychologists).

In particular, Sober & Wilson put up a pretty good evolutionary argument against Egoism using parental care. Based on availability, reliability and cost-effectiveness in regards to personal well-being it is more likely that altruism would have been chosen over hedonism in the selection process.

The primary reason for this is because hedonism is "mediated by beliefs". In order to provide parental care for our offspring, we would first need to believe that caring for them would provide us with more pleasure over the alternatives. These beliefs must then prove to be correct, otherwise the desire to care can pass. This leaves a large amount of room for error in the parental care process, and also within the social co-operation process. So, it is unlikely this trait would have been selected for use from an evolutionary stand point.

Not exactly hard evidence, but it makes short work of the Egoist's behavioral learning argument.

And here's an argument based on some fairly recent (within the past half-century) research on Social Psychology:



Those are my two favourite arguments against Egoism. In conclusion, I also enjoy staring at my avatar's nipple.

@complete-horizon-4579257

Sorry about that, I wrote my standing in my reply to Rbz and forgot to put in your reply. I'm an altruist, and if you want some good reasoning aside from skepticism check out the arguments I posted in reply to Rbz. They, along with my own empirical evidence, are my reasons for being an altruist.

You seem intelligent as well, I look forward to more conversations with you in the future.

@echoeagle3

What are you talking about, have you seen the replies to this thread?

No problems, I'm pretty patient for replies, since this forum is a time-killer for me, which I use to let out pent-up stress. I checked out your arguments, and although there's nothing 100%, you make a very good case. Still, I'm on the fence about the issue, because I can't feel perfectly honest with my beliefs unless there is enough weight on one side that the evidence on they other side is insignificant.

As far as whether I believe in altruism or egoism, for now, I'm neutral. No opinion as of yet. I have seen real life examples of both sides of the argument, and while I can argue for either side, I can prove nothing. That is why I'll keep neutral for now.

I also enjoyed our conversation, and hope we'll have more of these exchanges in the future ^_^.

P.S. From your writing style, I'm just curious, are you female in real life? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I'm just wondering if my guess was correct.

I live in the second largest wine producing region in Canada. A good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon is pretty easy to come by here. I could just go to the wineries themselves and get it cheap.

No, I wasn't. I have basically two modes: Pedantic prick and facetious cock. The pedantic prick part just notices and focuses on, often times, insignificant bullshit. Like this:


>per say

I'm also not as well read as you, but I know how to logic, so in the end it all works out for me. Facetious cock is basically what you saw as the lead-in to my last response to you. It was just my way of letting you know that I'm not going to be doing any serious participating here anymore. I said what I needed to say and saw what I wanted to see, so it was about time for me to fuck off.



Reminiscent of the shit I posted before: "You presume the intent of an individual's actions as selfish based on the inference that the alleviation of their distress and/or the psychological reward received after the fact are justifications for their behavior. The only thing we can know is that their emotional disturbance for that moment spurred them from complacency into action. What we don't know is whether that action was motivated by selfishness."

Speaking of which, for the sake of pedantry I'll clarify a particular point: "Wow, didn't expect someone here to understand epistemology. Really though, you could apply that argument to disprove the majority of statements."

Not sure if you were thinking of this, but I didn't mean knowing to a degree of definitive metaphysical certitude. I had some cunt use that on me back in the day in SD, claiming we don't really know anything and we have to have faith in our existence as we know it, trying to retort my stance about atheists not being burdened by the dipshittery of faith, while theists are. That shit just kills any discussion. I mean, we have to start from somewhere, or else never make any conclusions about anything. No, what I meant was knowing to the extent that we can know anything about our universe, given the limits of our ability to analyze it. I'm an empiricist. Put another way, I firmly believe in the validity of the scientific method (methodological naturalism) as a means of providing us with robust, logical and reliable epistemological bases for making claims about reality. It's the best means of knowing anything that humanity has to offer. So in order to support the idea that egoism is an absolute, or that true altruism doesn't exist, one would have to prove this negative through empirical evidence beyond what we could ever hope to attain; one would need to be omniscient to have such evidence.



Since you bothered with me some more, I'll give you a legit response: This detail is ultimately irrelevant to the question as I mentioned before the point of it, but a psychopath is not retarded, they just lack empathy. Unless they were born as an adult from an overgrown test tube, they should have the personal experience necessary to be able to logically piece together the details of a particular circumstance in order to realize someone's fucked. "Let's see, dude's walking where cars drive and to the left is a speeding vehicle that doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon, so judging by its trajectory the guy's roadkill. I was able to understand their situation. Now to sit back and watch a for reals action flick with realistic special effects."



Personal experience?

---

Man, all this talk about skepticism and epistemology reminds me of my main man philosonigga, René Descartes. Dude could solipsism like a fucking pro. I'll never forget his most inspirational quote:



R.I.P.

it really doesn't matter the motivations if more good happens. even if their motivations are some funky twisted pretzel of a logicflow, if what they do as a result helps other people, then it really doesn't matter their motivation anymore.